San Francisco Middle Schools No Longer Teaching Algebra

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > San Francisco Middle Schools No Longer Teaching Algebra

ComradeCosmobot: Dec 4, 2004; USPOL July

asdf32 posted:

My opinion: large swaths of mathematics and algebra in particular are low class drudgery made largely irrelevant by computers and calculators. Math to most of real life is like spelling and grammar to writing. It's a tool which should be understood well enough to manipulate but fixation on the mechanics of the process is either mostly irrelevant or actually impedes higher level thought.

The Common Core math curriculum agrees with you :ssh:

# ¿ Sep 11, 2015 04:18

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:31

ComradeCosmobot: Dec 4, 2004; USPOL July

Ernie Muppari posted:

improbable!

"Findings show that schools vary in the extent to which African American and Latino students are underrepresented in advanced sophomore math classes. This pattern of racial inequality in schools is associated with lower minority senior-year grades and enrollment in 4-year postsecondary institutions, net of students� own background."

EDIT: "The simple conclusion is that ceteris paribus schools with higher concentrations of minority students lead to lower achievement for Black students but minimal effects on whites or Hispanics."

ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Sep 11, 2015

# ¿ Sep 11, 2015 05:05

ComradeCosmobot: Dec 4, 2004; USPOL July

computer parts posted:

We already didn't have trigonometry in my school, I think it went Geometry -> Alg 2 -> Pre-Cal -> Some form of Calculus, or maybe with Alg 1 first and then the subsequent three topics.

Just as a baseline for the discussion of "Pre-Cal vs. Trigonometry", in my personal experience, I'm pretty sure Pre-Cal is basically "Trigonometry-Plus" and usually adds some other stuff like probabilities (usually just discrete, which is tied in with...), basic combinatorics, and some Algebra II refresher stuff (of which the probabilities and combinatorics might be part, but in more detail). Maybe some basic systems of linear equations stuff, but I don't think it was anything more than can be solved by substitution or elimination of variables. I might have come across matrices in that class, briefly, but I think it wasn't really until college that we actually covered them in detail.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2015 22:33

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